Family, History, Memory: Notes on Some Jewish Graphic Novels

Why dig into the past—communal, familial—particularly when it is likely to yield dark, horrible truths? What’s the connection between visual storytelling, especially in the form of comics, and the piecing together of events from long ago? In this talk, Tahneer Oksman will discuss four graphic memoirs (or, in other words, non-fiction graphic novels): Rutu Modan’s The Property, Nora Krug’s Belonging, Amy Kurzweil’s Flying Couch, and Miriam Katin’s Letting It Go. Despite their differing plots and perspectives, these visual works all powerfully evoke some of the most important, related questions about the Holocaust and other 20th and 21st century atrocities. Ultimately, these texts investigate what it means to adequately, and ethically, address the past, including untold, and unseen, histories.

Tahneer Oksman, Associate Professor of Academic Writing, Marymount Manhattan College

Tahneer Oksman (she/her) is a writer, teacher, and scholar. Her interests revolve around comics and visual narrative, contemporary feminist literature, and memoir studies as well as twentieth- and twenty-first century Jewish American literature and culture. She is the author of “How Come Boys Get to Keep Their Noses?”: Women and Jewish American Identity in Contemporary Graphic Memoirs (Columbia University Press, 2016), and the co-editor of The Comics of Julie Doucet and Gabrielle Bell: A Place Inside Yourself (University Press of Mississippi, 2019), which won the 2020 Comics Studies Society (CSS) Prize for Best Edited Collection. She is also co-editor of a multi-disciplinary Special Issue of Shofar: an Interdisciplinary Journal of Jewish Studies, titled “What’s Jewish About Death?” (March 2021). Tahneer's literary journalism can be found in publications including The Los Angeles Review of Books, The Comics Journal, The Forward, The Guardian, The Believer, and The Women’s Review of Books. Currently, she is working on a new book exploring memoirs about grief and why we read them, as well as co-editing an anthology of personal essays about feminism and mentorship. For more of her writing, you can visit tahneeroksman.com.

Sunday, 12 December, 8 pm Israel / 6 pm UK / 1 pm EST

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Family, History, Memory: Notes on Some Jewish Graphic Novels

Why dig into the past—communal, familial—particularly when it is likely to yield dark, horrible truths? What’s the connection between visual storytelling, especially in the form of comics, and the piecing together of events from long ago? In this talk, Tahneer Oksman will discuss four graphic memoirs (or, in other words, non-fiction graphic novels): Rutu Modan’s The Property, Nora Krug’s Belonging, Amy Kurzweil’s Flying Couch, and Miriam Katin’s Letting It Go. Despite their differing plots and perspectives, these visual works all powerfully evoke some of the most important, related questions about the Holocaust and other 20th and 21st century atrocities. Ultimately, these texts investigate what it means to adequately, and ethically, address the past, including untold, and unseen, histories.

Tahneer Oksman, Associate Professor of Academic Writing, Marymount Manhattan College

Tahneer Oksman (she/her) is a writer, teacher, and scholar. Her interests revolve around comics and visual narrative, contemporary feminist literature, and memoir studies as well as twentieth- and twenty-first century Jewish American literature and culture. She is the author of “How Come Boys Get to Keep Their Noses?”: Women and Jewish American Identity in Contemporary Graphic Memoirs (Columbia University Press, 2016), and the co-editor of The Comics of Julie Doucet and Gabrielle Bell: A Place Inside Yourself (University Press of Mississippi, 2019), which won the 2020 Comics Studies Society (CSS) Prize for Best Edited Collection. She is also co-editor of a multi-disciplinary Special Issue of Shofar: an Interdisciplinary Journal of Jewish Studies, titled “What’s Jewish About Death?” (March 2021). Tahneer's literary journalism can be found in publications including The Los Angeles Review of Books, The Comics Journal, The Forward, The Guardian, The Believer, and The Women’s Review of Books. Currently, she is working on a new book exploring memoirs about grief and why we read them, as well as co-editing an anthology of personal essays about feminism and mentorship. For more of her writing, you can visit tahneeroksman.com.

Sunday, 12 December, 8 pm Israel / 6 pm UK / 1 pm EST

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